Wars were won

Wars were won

The cost of war
Is estimated in the billions
Of broken infrastructure
That needs rebuilding

In the loss of life
Of the fighters
The civilians
And those left behind
Whose life cannot be rebuilt
As it was before

In the numbers displaced
Homeless in an alien land
As refugees
As they bide their time to return

In the loss of innocence
Among the children
A childhood snatched
For the insanity of their elders
A debt, rarely repaid,

So many different ways to measure
The loss of a war,
Yet , history reports,
Wars were won.

--shubha

P.S. This poem came to me in response to a photograph of a of a terrified little girl in Syria with her hands up , because she thought the photojournalists camera was a gun.